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Use A Regular Phone For Cellphone Calls
nizo writes "Not too long ago I decided to get rid of my landline, however I miss being able to make a call with a regular phone, especially long calls that might drain my battery. It would also be nice if I didn't have to hunt for my cellphone at home when it rings. Well, it looks like there is a simple solution with a Cell Socket, a cradle for your cellphone that can be used to attach your cell line to one or more regular phones." Even better, for those with a landline or VoIP phone, would be a system that automatically picks the cheapest route out for any given call.
a rotary cellphone
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Does it come in any other color than white?
I think that you'd be able to hack something together with Asterisk to do the "Even better, for those with a landline or VoIP phone, would be a system that automatically picks the cheapest route out for any given call." bit.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Just the cosmically wrong image of my sleek Nokia cell sitting right next to a black Western Electric rotary phone is enough to make me want one of these.
The coolest voice ever.
Even better, for those with a landline or VoIP phone, would be a system that automatically picks the cheapest route out for any given call.
For those with a VoIP phone, there's already such a system: always use the VoIP phone.
Apparently the server needs a Cell Socket.
I can't wait for the page to be...well...not-Slashdotted.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I think we have a new /. sub-culture.
"especially long calls that might drain my battery."
It seems like a simple solution would be to not talk on the phone so long.
with cell phone plans getting cheaper, this looks to be a viable alternative what with national call plans and competitive prices from all providers. the only thing of course, is that to have DSL, you need an actual phone number/line. unless everyone is going to run to cable, land lines are here to stay. that and many places don't even have cell towers anywhere near them so cell phones are useless in many areas anyway. in that respect, i don't see the land line market dying anytime soon.
I have a set of lookup tables on my asterisk server which do this.
:)
Of course the cheapest route is always analogue, so it's not a great advert for VOIP
Not sure I'd want my mobile phone to link to it though.. that's a separate number that only a few trusted people know.
I hope their phone system is built better than their webserver.
I can't RTFA right now, so my only concern is the ability to adapt to different cell phone manufacturers, and what about newer cell phones after purchase. Otherwise, this actually doesn't sound like too difficult a project, but it's the idea that counts. This kind of device can easily be created with a few components and a PIC for under $10.
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right. --Isaac Asimov
They stopped selling those nifty phones for kids... Paranoia?
Why is this same joke being modded funny on every story where it gets posted? If anyone were to bother to RTFA, they would see it is a pretty straight-forward article. What could there even be FUD about?
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
Cingular offers a device called a fast forward. You put the device in a cradle that connects to the landline and it automatically forwards all calls to your landline while charging your device.
I miss being able to make a call with a regular phone, especially long calls that might drain my battery.
When you get home, plug your phone into the charger. If you use it, leave it plugged in.
It would also be nice if I didn't have to hunt for my cellphone at home when it rings.
Leave it in the same place... attached to the charger.
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:ZWgMwpNIwucJ: www.cellsocket.com/+cellsocket&hl=en
A company has a product. Slashdot notes the companies product. Company's website becomes Slashdotted. Product == No Good.
;)
How does one come to this conclusion?
The company's website is Slashdotted, therefore it cannot handle a massive amount of traffic, therefore they did not expect this much interest in their product, because they have little faith in said product, because, well, they developed it and they themselves think it sucks, so it must suck.
Just a thought...
Awesome concept though...I would love this. One of the biggest things I hate about talking on a cell phone for an extended period is how warm the phone gets cause of the battery.
interface with my shoe phone?
man, I feel like mold.
For those of you who live in an area without high speed internet access, devices like these will not allow you to use your cellphone to make calls to analog (traditional) internet service providers. (Same applys to mobile/flea market merchants with credit card terminals that dial into their processing center) 99.9% of cellphones are on a digital network (CDMA/TDMA/iDEN/GSM/GPRS/etc) and can not provide the channel clarity needed for analog signals
The Dock-n-Talk seems to be a much better product than the Cellsocket.
http://www.phonelabs.com/prd05.asp
It claims to work with over 400 cell phone models and has a bunch of features not found in the Cellsocket.
While we are on it, does anyone know of a product that allows you to make landline calls THROUGH your cellphone? Here is my idea:
1) Landline phone hooked up to a cell phone (Phone A)
2) You have another cell phone (Phone B)
3) Both cell phones are on UNLIMITED Mobile-to-Mobile plan.
4) You place a call from Phone B to Phone A and tell Phone A to dial a number through your landline.
5) You chat on the phone for 3 hours AND USE UP NO MINUTES since you are on Mobile-to-Mobile connection.
Viola, UNLIMITED PEAK MINUTES AT PRICE OF 2 CELL PHONES, CHEAPO 2-PHONE PLAN, AND UNLIMITED LANDLINE!!
Doesnt asterisk do least cost routing?
Cellsocket is a great idea. I looked into them extensively about 2 years ago. But they didn't make a version for my cellphone, and worse, they were quite slow to develop new adapters for new phones. This is a great market for such a device, but I honestly don't think it'll really take off until the cell manufacturing companies start making this a default must-have accessory with every new phone.
Nothing sucks more than being forced to buy an old, outdated phone, just so you can use the Cellsocket.
Basically, you're looking for something like Least Cost Routers (anybody wanna translate this?). These things have been very popular in Germany ever since the telecom market was deregulated. In Germany you can use other (landline) telecom providers through a Call-By-Call system, dialing the provider's prefix before your actual phone number if you want to use a provider other than your default one (e.g., 01033 for German Telekom, 01013 for Tele2). There's whole websites dedicated to providing lists of the cheapest call-by-call providers. These LCRs can store such lists of providers and their rates for different types of calls (i.e., local, long-distance, other countries, cell phone networks, etc.) at different times of the day/week, and the automatically prefix the number you dial with the cheapest provider's. Of course, lists can be updated manually or automatically. Now, I'm not sure if anybody has built such a device with cell vs. landline vs. VoIP in mind, but if that exists, other Slashdotters who can be bothered to look it up instead of working ;-) will surely post links...
FWIW, there's also an isdn4linux-based LCR tool and corresponding phone rate databases (see English summary at bottom) available. For cell/landline/VoIP solutions, if there's nothing else available, there is probably a good starting point.
wish i had some mod points..
I had a Cell Socket for a while, then it died. Plus, I couldn't upgrade that one phone either since it was only compatible with a few models.
What I settled on was a Telular box. It's a company that makes high end boxes for companies that need phone service where there isn't anything but cell. They've got a bunch of products and it works pretty good for most needs. You can even hook it into a phone system so you can route your companies long distance through it to use free long distance minutes.
FYI, Sprint is doing a trial with Telular boxes in selected cities as a way to replace your land line.
For some reason, these people find old jokes funny every time they hear them. The mods must not have any sense of humor.
Irony works by saying something that's not expected. So since I expect a soviet russia, old korean, cmdrtaco, etc joke on every discussion, it's not ironic so it's not funny.
if it's anything like my vox.link (same idea, from radio shack) you have to use DTMF touchtones (incl # to 'send') it's generating a real dialtone.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Also might be good for those users that have a cellphone next to their brain 24/7. Although the risks are "undetermined," better safe than sorry :)
With a system like this you could just buy a mondo cell phone plan and use your cell for all your calls- When you're at home, you just plug in the phone, and now it's your home phone number- I like it!
This shouldn't be a worry if you have a digital cell phone. A simple cord turns your phone into a modem. With Verizon, for example, you get full internet access, billed simply as regular phone minutes. There's no additional charge. The speed is only 14.4, but that's plenty for email, credit card validation, etc.
according to an advertisement in CE magazine this cordless phone from uniden will allow you to make calls from your cellphone using the handsets in the house...via the dead bluetooth http://www.uniden.com/productpop/00_productpop.cfm ?prd_code=ELBT595
Another benefit of this is being able to record cell phone conversations, if that's something you need.
Seriously, this is just like an OLD product from VOX Link.
8 176,00.html
Their website seems to have gone away http://www.vox2.com/, but here is an article that mentions them http://www.entrepreneur.com/mag/article/0,1539,28
--Good morning fellas; Hand me that thing; Boy, this work's hard; Guys, break's over.
I've had this idea for _YEARS_.
I think the results speak for themselves. Nice job!
what's the big deal? You could buy analog POTS interfaces for cellphones to use to connect to answering machines back before voicemail was commonly available. I had a 110V answering machine running off of an inverter in my car just like the ~300 or so other people I installed them in. It was a very common thing to do. I also had one at home connected to my demarc point. Add a 12V power supply plus free calls from Sprint since I sold their service, and whole-house cell-phone service in 1992!
Another option would be to get a VOIP phone (i.e. Vonage) for home, and have it simultaneously ring your cell phone when it's called. Then you can just have people dial the VOIP phone when they want to reach you, leaving you to decide which line to pick up.
Of course, this means you'd need to get a new line with a recurring fee if you don't already have a VOIP line, which will cost you $20+ per month instead of whatever fixed rate the cell-socket costs. But its worth considering.
There was a similiar item available for certain models of Nokia phones a couple years ago that did the exact same thing. The market didn't embrace the concept then but I could easily image that it could now.
Even though you've got a dock, I bet most people will keep using their mobile as a mobile. That's what it was designed for, after all.
I've been using this (stupid) trick to talk to my girlfriend (long distance): Party A: Forward your cell phone to Party B's Land-line, then call your own cell phone FROM your own land-line. Now you're both talking on normal-size phones, and you're using cellular minutes (good for night/weekends). Sure, you're double-paying slightly, but it's definately worth the not-brain-tumors.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
I got one of these about a year ago.
I recently built a vacation/retirement house in a remote area (where I could get a landline but can't get DSL or cable internet) and got cellphones to use during the construction project - then decided to try using them with a cell socket rather than installing a landline. Didn't work as well as I'd like.
My phone is an older Nokia model and the service AT&T (now Cingulair) wireless. That company is the only carrier available in the area - and no GSM, just TDMA (and maybe AMPS but I can't tell for sure).
The Cell Socket works reasonably well for voice calls.
It provides charging current when the cellphone is ON hook, but stops when the phone is engaged in a call. (Apparently the power brick is too small to power the cellphone and POTS-emulator line at the same time.)
The Cell Socket doesn't provide a dial tone. Instead (if you pick up the POTS phone when the cellphone is plugged in and ready) it provides a series of three beeps. Apparently these emulate the three beeps you get at the front of an intercept recording. My guess is that this is intended to keep people form trying to use modems and FAX machines with the Cell socket.
I tried programming a modem to use it (ignoring the wait-for-dialtone). But even at the lowest speed setting it would not work with the TDMA cellphone service.
(I hear you can get 1200 baud or so through an AMPS cellphone connection. Unfortunately, my phone was a Nokia with AT&T firmware, and (as far as I can tell) those (at AT&T's insistence) can not be forced to make an AMPS call when a digital carrier is available. So I couldn't test that.)
So it's good for:
- Making long distance calls on your cheep cell plans comfortably.
- Eliminating your long-distance carrier on your landline.
- Using your cellphone anywhere in a house when there's only a few good spots for the signal.
- Putting voice-only service into a remote location, where a landline would be expensive to run (or used too little to justify the expense when you already have a cellphone).
But it's not good for:
- Data
- FAX
- Long calls with little time between them to recharge the cellphone battery.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Another advantage of this that nobody's noted yet is that you don't have to worry about reception. My apartment gets such poor cell coverage that I drop calls just walking around. With one of these I could put my cell in the spot where it got the best reception and leave it there. Or I could just stop pacing maniacally, but then I'd have to cut down on the coffee...
To receive /. calls!
Just get unlimited long distance + local from your phone company for $49.95/mo and be done. It really can't get much cheaper.
My wife and I have LG VX3100A cell phones, We consider her number to be the "home" phone, regardless of where she is. She uses her phone about 1800 minutes per month and I use about 200 minutes per month. She recharges her phone every Sunday and Wednesday or Thursday, and I recharge my phone every Sunday whether I need to or not.
Getting rid of the land line was the best communication move we ever made. It got rid of the telemarketers, too.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Now here's a question... Or an insight; whatever... I have been using my GPRS data connection for a while, through my cell, to make data connections. While being slower then wifi of any sort (except for these damn congested hotel networks), it is a great tool for say, traveling on a train, and making my connection. Cingular does not make this a vey easy thing to do, but thanks to a lot of patience, and research, i found a few web sites that really helped me out with getting this connection made. With Cingular/AT&T, the data package for full on GPRS all the time is 20 dollars a month, and it's always on as long as your in the GPRS network. The speed seems to be higher then regular dial up, and keeps me connected.
: www.cellsocket.com/+cellsocket&hl=en
1 1 Gotta search for the word cellsocket, can't seem to find an anchor to sink my digital teeth into.
:)
Link:
http://www.taniwha.org.uk/gprs.html Great link to scripts to make this possible in many ways with many phones.
Now the future as I see it is using something similiar to Skype, or VOIP technology to enable this as a way that i can be making calls through my computer, and paying for a GPRS connection that is always on. While it's nice to be able to just ring through on the cell, I think 20 dollars a month for a VOIP connection anywhere I can recieve GPRS would be FINE and Dandy! Feel free to add to this if anyone has done any other legwork into this idea.
Now, I figure this might be rate as offtopic, in fact, I fear it, but I see this as being related to some of the other things people have said so far on this topic. Now, I have looked at this product, (thank you anonymous coward for the easy link to the cached site
(here) http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:ZWgMwpNIwucJ
Now this is interesting.. This was mentioned in an earlier article, on Nov 22, 03.
Are we behind in the times?
http://boogle.cc/index.php?blogid=1&archive=2003-
I guess this seems like a neat product, but I want more. And I also question why this wasn't released as ?news? on slashdot till now? Hmmmmm
Well, let me know if anyone has any ideas on the other stuff I went rambling off on. Always on VOIP everywhere would rock my world harder then any hardline home phone thingamajig... Let's make the most of our collective brains, and start up the saucestorm of knowledge.. let it flow free
`B Flicks, `Cool Lick'ah, `Sweet Talk' `in' ManG'
Has anyone tried using a local cordless phone system of one of these cellsockets? I would be interested to know if you can use a multiple handset system such as the ones made by, Siemens, AirWaySystem, or panasonic http://siemens.ca/ http://airwaysystem.com/ http://panasonic.ca/
here's a fixed clickable http://www.uniden.com/productpop/00_productpop.cfm ?prd_code=ELBT595
`B Flicks, `Cool Lick'ah, `Sweet Talk' `in' ManG'
I still like using a regular FAX machine for sending and recieving so I keep my land line around. Too much hassle with alternatives. Would be nice to use this device with my 'ol FAX to finally give 'ma bell the ax.
so we have the inconvenience of a fixed phone with the cost* of a mobile.
Has this guy not heard of a battery charger?
*In Australia off peak calls with mobiles are about $0.50 per minute local calls on land lines are about $0.30 flat rate.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Slashdot paid mods modded this in the most non-subtle way ever seen.
I'm still waiting for a trek style comm badge that works as a phone.
Web Design Tips
...they offered this months ago... don't know how the billing works though
These have been around for years. My buddy has one of the first models they made. It worked with the 51xx/61xx models of Nokia phones. It also was the better model that he bought, that featured an external antenna connector. He would use it with a 2-line cordless phone around the house so he could answer whichever phone happened to ring. It has drawbacks though. He finds that he never gets text msg. notifications and only the GSM phones will pass CID info. He gets echo problems if he doesn't turn down the volume on the phone also. I'd like to see one of the new models that work with the Motorola phones and see how they work.
What i'd really prefer is a 'base station' that plugs into my landline and lets me use a second NAM on the phone to place local calls through the cell instead. I remember seeing some stuff in the Nokia programming menu that alluded to something like that possibly but never found anything else about it.
DSL does not require a "phone line." If you look at speakeasy, you'll see "onelink" which does not require phone service. Yes, it requires the POTS copper loop, but not the phone service. I think it costs something like $5 more than getting DSL added to a phone line (for renting the loop from the telco.)
M$ hahahaha
lollolrofl
M$
hahaha
M$ INsecurity!!!
hahah..that is so damn funny every time I hear it! Hey..how about this one...M$ LookOUT! hahahaa
You must be on M$ payroll! Astroturfer! Troll!
roflrofl Linux is soo teh c001!!! BSD is dying!!
This is the year of Linux on the desktop!
I want to say I saw a commercial, at least a year ago, with shaq running around his mansion trying to find his cellphone. Then in the next seen he just plugs his cell phone in a cradle and all the house phone rings....
:/
or maybe i was all just a dream
Call-Forward your cell phone to your landline. It won't cost anything as long as you're forwarding to another local number (same area code)
for Verizon Wireless customers, this is
*72 + 10-Digit Number to Forward + SEND, wait for the tone, END. (to deactivate, *720 + SEND, wait, END)
I live in a valley with a large hill between the house and the cell tower. The cell socket I have has a connection for an external antenna. I ran a coax line up to a high gain yagi antenna on the roof in order to get a signal. You can also get a power booster to improve the signal. When I got it, they only made them for the Nokia. The sound quality was not very good and I had to clean the connectors often. I imagine that they have improved some in the last couple of years. Since Cingular is going GCM, I had to change phones. The old Cell Socket won't work with the new phone so I am now using Cingulars Fast Forward. With Fast Forward you have to make outgoing calls with the cell phone, which for me means holding the cell phone up against the bedroom window to get a signal. Makes for shorter phone calls.
If a company can make this for home, why can't I get one for my car so I can implement real hands free operation. (with a speaker and a mic, not this wire bs)
I wish the cellular companies would just let me use my old phones that I already have this equipment for. Besides, they were tougher and had better radios which made for better reception in more places.
Phones currently on the market are POS, sure they can play games, take pictures, and play mp3s... Why can't they put a decent radio in them and provide car kits? I'd trade all the bells and whistles for those two "features" alone!
Actually, you plug in your phone and your phone signals Cingular to forward the call to another number. All the base unit is is a charger that signals the phone to signal Cingular.
Really, I'm not trying to be clever with my signature.
My cellphone doesn't work inside the house!
SBC/ATT ATTWS/Cingular has been transitioning to this model for years. SBC is the parent company of Cingular. This is the reason for the double merger. SBC would like to be a one-stop telecommunications place. 3G (3rd Generation) and 4G (4th Generation) models are to use your cell phone at home while your phone connects to a home station and receives calls transmitted over a broadband (VOIP). Then when going to a WiFi area your phone automatically picks up the Wifi signal and uses WiFi service. Then going to work your phone would use a cellular connection 100mb+ for all Internet network and cell service.
Cingular has UMTS in 4 markets Seattle and 4 other services. This is high-speed cellular service. Cingular will continue to lead the way into the 3G world. I have been a Verison user for 5 years and recently (4 months ago) started working in the NOC for ATTWS/Cingular. With the added merger of SBC/ATT will have the complete technology to provide a one stop shopping for all your GSM 3G technologies?
"Seriously, this is just like an OLD product from VOX Link."
Hehe. $200, I better hold onto mine.
"But it's not good for:
- Data
- FAX
- Long calls with little time between them to recharge the cellphone battery."
Data? If you live in one of the 4 UMTS markets you can receive faster data transmitions through your Cingular service then through your cable modem.
This is not true for all cell phone service. It depends on your plan. On AT&T Wireless (actually now Cingular), I enabled call forwarding from my cell to my home line.
No warning of fees / nothing was said until I got my bill and found that they charged $0.45 / minute. And I mean per minute it was enabled, not per minute I actually talked on a forwarded call. Not cool.
"Now the future as I see it is using something similiar to Skype, or VOIP technology to enable this as a way that i can be making calls through my computer, and paying for a GPRS connection that is always on."
... find out more on the http://www.gsmworld.com website.
Right. With the 3G and 4G plans at Cingular and the parent company SBC you will use them for all your needs. Via UMTS you will have 100mb+ wireless data connections. This is currently only in 4 markets and it will take a year before more markets are included because of the mergers.
It is the main reason for all the SBC/ATT mergers. SBC is planning on providing VOIP for your Cell phone. Stick with us we are leading the way in technology. Cingular is on the GSM model
Also if you get a chance see who is running the "Americas" GSM migration plan.
T-Mobil also uses GSM but they are far behind Cingular. Verison Sprint and Nextel all use proprietary protocols not GSM Open Standards.
I own the bluetooth cellsocket and it is incredible. Usually things like this do not work close to what they advertise - this thing does and in a big way I LOVE THIS! I just wish they had one that would work with more than 1 phone at a time
I was thinking of purchasing one of these, and I did purchase mine AFTER I dropped my blackberry in the canal behind my house late one night while i was doing some last minute boat work. Now I use 800MHZ phones that are 8 bucks each.
If you live out east in a studio apartment, perhaps, that works quite well. In my house, anyhwere I put the phone will be inconvienent to get from at least two other locations I'm likely to be and leave me jumping up and running to grab it. It simply takes three phones to have one in easy access everywhere. It's also not a particularly large house by Arizona standards. Plus, I find the reception really vaires throught my house. It's full strength in some places, rather weak in others.
I'd be interested in something like this, I think (I can't get at the site so I'm speculating as to what it does). I'd like to dock my cellphone in a single location that gets good service, then have a number of other phones around the house that tap in to it.
I guess it's tough to find the "chirp" button on your old rotary phone so you can make wireline phone-to-radio calls.
Asterisk already does least-cost-routing -- you even have a few different options to do it. Don't want to buy the CellSocket... use your BLUETOOTH phone with Asterisk. My celphone has unlimited incoming minutes. I dial my asterisk box and hangup... then it calls me back and gives me a dialtone. No outgoing minutes used.
The intersection of the set of geeks who would go through this hassle and put up with the less than ideal fidelity, and the set of people who would actually talk on the phone for 3 hours is pretty damn small.
I can't imagine many teenage girls doing all that.
I have four of these in my truck at work, it runs through the pbx. The only thing different from a normal POTS line, or an old AMPS cell is that you hit the # sign to "send" the call.
Looks nice. Would be even nicer if they worked with brands other than Motorola. Hasn't this site been in "other phones real soon now" mode for a while?
Bummer about it being no good for a fax. I've run in to many situations where I wished I could fax something via my phone.
Someone said I should sell these.
We've been waiting for you :)
I once worked for an ISP that massively abused this feature. They had about 20 cell phones, all set to forward to their main hunt group. The brilliant part was that there was no limit to the number of simultaneous calls that could be forwarded from a single phone number, and it even worked across LATA boundaries. This sort of service would otherwise have been very expensive, as at the time, and I believe now, running a T1 across a LATA boundary required provisioning multiple segments, each at around $1k a month. This gave them 20 virtual POPs, covering a significant chunk of the state, for only a few hundred dollars a month. At some point I believe cell phone companies instituted a per-minute charge for forwarding, and that was the end of that.
My group and I just finished something very similar to this for our senior project at Texas A&M. We used a Nokia 6100 and a land line phone, a DTMF decoder, a SLIC to convert from single ended to hybrid signals, and a Stamp microcontroller. We chose to drop the land-line subscription altogether. It worked out really well :)
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
stolen from hack-a-day:
Except that my parents bought one of these when I was back in the 8th grade under a different name. That would have put it back at 1998-1999 sometime (if I can subtract right...)
Perhaps Hack-A-Day stole the idea from one of the origional implimentations.
Second I recommend acquiring a headset. You'll need a wireless headset like the bluetooth Jabra BT200 so you can walk around. However if you can rig up your antenna-boosted cell phone to a regular landline headset like the Plantronics DT12 then I'm sure you'll save on costly dead battery replacements on the BT200 (impossible, so you have to buy a new one which is why replacing one costs so much). I have a DT12 and love it.
And lastly, back to Wilson Electronics, I also recommend the use of a cellular amp if you have reception problems in your house. Wilson makes some excellent cellular amplifiers with an external antenna like the 301103 I mentioned above with the low-profile "stealth" antenna model 301106. It sounds like an excellent product overall.
I have but one wish for my cellular needs. My folks live in an area with very little cellular coverage. You can get a bar, sometimes two on the 5 mile treck off the highway to their house. You can get 3-4 bars in some places on the highest peaks of the hills around their home. The of course are at the bottom of one of those hills, and are on the wrong side of the hill. You can however get a signal at the top of that hill and about 150 down the driveway. If I can get the signal on my cell then surely a quality external antenna and amp can do much better. What I would like to find is some device that can act as a digital interface to the cellular network. That device would need to connect to a commodity network such as Ethernet (wifi, copper, or fiber), transmit the signal over the network to another node, and have that node take that same signal and put it out on another antenna at that new site. This is really quite similar to what their amp does already, although it's not dumping the signal onto a completely different network and rebroadcasting it; the amp simply rebroadcast the amplified signal on the internal antenna at full strength. You cell phone should look for the tower with the strongest signal and thus will use the internal antenna (this also means you don't have to physically connect your antenna to your cell). Now I know things like this can be done with fancy commercial first-responder equipment like what NYC now uses post-9/11 to merge all the various city agencies together on demand. They can put a cellular call through to a person's 2-way if need be. What I'd do with something like this is put Wilson's large trucker antenna and amp down the driveway a couple hundred yards where it can get a decent signal. Then I'd dump it on fiber back to the house where I'd rebroadcast it on an inside antenna like the 301103. It's a cellular bridge of sorts, or a repeater depending on how you look at it. Does anyone know of such a thing?
that you actually train yourself to put your cell phone down in the same spot after you are done talking so you don't have to go searching it the next time it rings. Do unwired phones just screw with your life to no end?
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
This was my senior design project in college. Or similar to it. We had grandios ideas, but got it working (hackingly I must admit). Motorola does not freely release code for interfacing digitally with their data port. Thank god for old analog phones: https://courses.ece.uiuc.edu/ece445/cgi-bin/view_p roject.pl?spring2001_25
We've done it for years. Forward your cell phone to whomever you wish to call, and then call your cell phone. We did this all through college to get free long distance. The call from local land line to local cell was free, no cell minutes used since the phone was never activated.
But then the rules may have changed since those years. And now I'm a successful adult who doesn't care that I have a $250 a month cumulative phone bill.
- Sig this!
This cellsocket is a complete faliure.
Anyone who uses a cellphone for more than a week knows, that you _never_ dial a number on your cellphone. There is the phonebok! Nobody will want to use a paper phonebook or memorize numbers of relatives and friends anymore. When you are out in town, you use your cellphone with the built in phonebook, and when you are home you revert to dialing 12 digit numbers? You have to admit that this will never be popular.
vajk
Cellsocket is a dock. The phone plugs in, like a real desk charger. To my mind, a much more elegant solution.
The dinner is prepared!
I have such a setup for about 4 years, and even at the initial setup date 4 years ago this was not "cutting edge". It seems that you have just discovered an old technology.Congratulations :)
My solution to the problem is a Siemens Gigaset Sx353 DECT base station with Bluetooth:
:)
as soon as my cell phone (SonyEricsson T610) is in range (and mostly in its desk stand, recharging, it is available as an additional line for every phone connected to the Siemens base station.
Very nice solution, especially since cell calls to landline phones are currently cheaper than my ISDN line. Reason: Arcor, my ISDN+DSL provider is terribly expensive in regular phone calls, but their DSL is cheap. Guess why they don't bundle any VoIP routers with their DSL offers
Yup, BroadVoice.com is the best.
Oh, great, a cool line from the cell phone anti-marketing department.
> long calls that might drain my battery. It
> would also be nice if I didn't have to hunt
> for my cellphone at home
Why not leave your phone plugged into its charger? Then it is always in the same place and full of juice.
Dialectician. Archology.
The czech company Jablotron made a 'mobile' GSM phone with the size of a desk phone.p roducts/ gdp-02 ... a nice choice for elderly people, or others that find current miniature hi-res displays too straining to their eyes.
http://www.jablotron.cz/en/index.php?pid=
It was already featured on CNN - as some kind of a quirky gadget, but it seems that it hit the spot. There are already hundreds of thousands ordered units.
It can run on battery or AC power from adaptor, and has a big display
I have never understood people who have these problems with cell phones.
Can't find it? Easy: keep the damn thing on you! I assume you take it with you in some way when you leave the house...keep doing that when you're at home. In my case, that means my pocket. I have yet to misplace my phone for even a minute. Over several years. How difficult, eh?
Always running out of charge? How about plugging it in to charge when you drop it from your pocket (or whatever)? In my case, that means plugging it in when going to bed (along with dumping all the keys, wallet, etc., and in the same spot). I have yet to run out of charge. Over several years. Gee, amazing, huh?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Where I work (and in many companies around Israel) it's already being used.
When an employee calls a cellular number, it automatically uses a real cellphone on the same cellular network to make the call.
This probably saves tons of cash for a big company.
I read that it's an Israeli invention (and patent) but I'm not sure.
Does anyone know how it's called and who makes these things?
here in brasil cals from cell phone-to-cell phone are cheaper than calls from land line-to-cell phone, so many comapanies are ataching cell phones to their PBX sistems so any call to numbers starting with 7,8 or 9 (is mandatory that cell phones numbers begins with one of these digits) are routed through the mobiles. some say the cost savings pays the cost of the equipment really soon.
What ? Me, worry ?
... since it appears to be nothing more than an advertisement for a particular product?? ;^)
Any idea if this would work with TIVO? I don't have a landline, just cellular, so its a pain to find a landline every two weeks to dial into the service.
I think he means modem to modem data, cingular only connects you to the internet.
I have a Cellsocket for my Verizon Motorola T730. Overall, it's an okay solution.
My main problem is lack of cell reception at my house. If I stand outside on the deck or next to a window, I have marginal reception and can *usually* make a call. However, service inside the house is useless... ie, the phone might ring, but the call will cut out immediately.
I was thinking that the Cellsocket with its external antenna would eliminate my problems. I could just place it next to the window and all would be fine.
That turned out not to be the case. The antenna that the Cellsocket came with actually turned out to have worse reception than the phone's itself in my case. When plugged into the Cellsocket, the phone would show 2 or 3 bars of service. However, I would not be able to place calls, or my calls would drop within the first minute.
I finally solved the problem by buying an external antenna... a magnetic one that I believe is intended to mount on top of your car temporarily. I bought that and an adapter to screw into the Cellsocket's antenna connection. After putting the antenna on top of a metal filing cabinet next to the window, my reception problems disappeared. Oddly enough, my phone shows only one or two bars of signal strength, but my calls very rarely drop anymore.
My last complaint is the firmware seems to be a bit flaky. Sometimes the speed dial doesn't work. Sometimes I can place calls through a connected phone, I can hear who I'm calling, but they can't hear me. Cycling the cellphone's power seems to fix that one.
Oh, and any calls which require touchtone input (especially accessing my voicemail) require the input on the docked cellphone itself, not the attached phone.
Overall, it's a decent product. It's allowed me to use my cellphone inside my house, which I was almost unable to do before. But due to its unreliability, I had to suck it up and pay for a landline.
We use the Cellsocket in the intercom and IFB systems in news vans and satellite trucks a lot. There is one caveat about extended use - the Cellsocket will NOT charge the cellphone while it is being used. So your battery will eventually drain and your call will be dropped. Also, the Cellsocket will not give you a traditional dialtone. It gives you a few beeps when you pick up a POTS phone to let you know it's working.
Another device we use is called a Telular, which will give you a dialtone when you pick up the attached phone. The Telular devices were originally designed to be an emergency backup for landlines (hang one on the wall by your PBX, trunk gets cut, patch in the Telular and you have dialtone). They have also been pressed into service where the last mile would be too expensive (mountain cabins, hunting camps, etc). Telular's downside is that they have been slow to keep up with changing technology, and their phones have to be ordered for specific providers and are not reprogrammable if you change providers.
With the slow demise of analog cellular service, TV stations and news gathering vehicle owners have been pretty much screwed by the cellular companies. The digital delay messes with the field reporter's IFB, you can't run a modem or fax over digital service, and the options to digital cell service are too expensive.
The number 1 problem of working in a cubicle - 23 power cords, 1 outlet...
If you forward during nights or weekends, it's free.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
... if it's alrady a feature.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I'm not certain, as I haven't looked into it, but I have a Motorola v551, and I believe you can make voice calls from a computer with the Phone Tools software (And the USB cable for the phone).
And if you can't, I'm still having a blast shoving WarCraft 2 and Final Fantasy 7 midi onto the thing and using them as ringtones. It might only have 24 polyphony, but I can barely notice dropped notes, and the MIDIs sound great.
I have designed a device similar in function to the Cellsocket/Dock-n-Talk/Cidco Merge, but that will work with almost any cellphone instead of the few brands that those devices work with, and will cost a SMALL FRACTION of the price of the those products - I estimate around $25. My device will also work with VoIP softphones, such as Skype, and audio over AIM/iChat/etc.
With my device, the user must perform all dial and answer functions at the cellphone itself, but can use a regular telephone to speak once the call is established. So, you get many of the advantages of the other products for a cheaper price - something I think many Slashdotters would be interested in.
It is not yet available in quantity, but if you are intersted in more information, please email me. A few beta units will be available soon and I'm looking for a few good geeks!
email is: spam-SlashdotPhone with the URL at the top of this post (Please leave the "spam-" in there)
(I was trying to encode the email address, but /. wouldn't let me!)
Adam
Veovis is right that *this device* will not allow you to use you cellphone to connect a computer to an analog dialup ISP. However, at least with T-Mobile this is moot because you can do that without any devices except your phone.
I do *NOT* pay for gprs packet service from T-Mobile. However, sometimes I find myself in the middle of nowhere (Waterloo, IA) in a hostile environment (my mother-in-law's spyware-infested computer) and am dying for any other way to get a safe connection. Since long-distance is free on my cell phone, I hook my V600 up to my Powerbook (either with the cable or by bluetooth), use the modem scripts from here and dial in to the back-up modem pool offered by my DSL ISP. Sure, it only goes at 9600Kbps, but that's a totally free connection anywhere in the US. It's good enough for email.
T-Mobile's network is smart enough to tell that it's a data call, not a voice call, but it's billed within my minutes (as minutes) and not as data service (as bytes). With unlimited weekend and evening minutes, there's literally no cost whatsoever.
I don't know about the poor sods who are still on CDMA/TDMA, but those of us with GSM can still choose not to pay for GPRS service if we choose.
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
Siemens had something liekt his a couple of years ago for their S35i phone (and other compatible phones). It was a charging cradle that was connected to the phone line. When you got a call on your mobile you could pick it up on the landline phone. Also, if you made a call using the landline phone, it could be directed via the mobile if the prefix matched one of the programmable prefixes stored in the device. There was also a "least-cost routing" feature for the POTS. It had a button that let you forward all incoming calls on the landline phone to the mobile (using a feature offered by the POTS network operator). Finally, it kept sure that your phone was charged :-)
I doubt that Siemens still makes them, but you might find one on ebay -- search for 2phone.
where's all that Karma?
I bought one of these a couple months ago and I love it. When I get home, I just drop my cell phone in the cradle and it will ring any phone in my house. The caller id info is also sent to all my land line phones. The downsides I have noted are:
1) Sometimes people on the other end hear a faint echo
2) You have to dial the # key after a number to place a call, so it won't work with any hardware device like a Satellite box that has to dial home. Although I don't know that a modem could work over a cell phone anyway.
Upside: I save $40/month on a land line I rarely used.
Data? If you live in one of the 4 UMTS markets you can receive faster data transmitions through your Cingular service then through your cable modem.
I'd love to do that. But I don't.
The cell site is just TDMA. No data (other than digitized voice), period. And as of the last time I checked (a couple weeks ago) there were NO plans at Cingular to EVER upgrade it - even to voice-only GSM - just as AT&T had no such plans before the merger.
(I'll try again from time to time as the merger shakes out and gets organized.)
It's right on the edge of their TDMA coverage, far off the edge of their GSM coverage, and they're not planning to expand either - even to convert it to GSM as they retire TDMA. Verizon has no plans to extend coverage to that area, either. (With the AT&T/Cingular cell and a roaming agreement, they apparently consider it adequately covered.)
Since there's only a handfull of retirement homes and the intersection of two not-heavily-traveled highways, it's probably too sparse for 'em. (If the area zoned for a new subdivision ever develops they might change their mind. But in that case I'd be losing much of the view I built there to get, selling the house at an inflated price, and moving further out.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Data? If you live in one of the 4 UMTS markets you can receive faster data transmitions through your Cingular service then through your cable modem.
Also: UMTS is metered at a penny a megabyte if you use it for anything other than browsing on your cellphone's screen.
Bluetooth, cable-from-the-phone, or plugging the authorization card into a different phone or device all start the meter.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
They mentioned this product on Gizmodo back in November.
o la /cidco-merge-dock-026503.php
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/cellphones/motor
You can choose what line you dial out on using a calling code.